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The difficult thing about reviewing Metamatic has to do with my format. I prefer to give a track-by-track description, but this CD is so stylistically, thematically and sonically unified that it will almost certainly sound redundant before I'm done. In order to be more efficient and not waste words (I'm sure you noticed that I never do that!) I have to describe the album overall before getting into the more detailed run-down. One of the main characteristics of Metamatic is that it is very unashamedly electronic. Not only did Foxx not try to make the synthesizers sound real, he actually emphasized their synthetic nature. This was consistent with the robotic, sterile, futuristic theme of the album overall. Well, it seemed futuristic at the time, anyway. Back when this album came out (and I was a kid, incidentally) it seemed there was a rather unreasoning fear of robots dominating our future and basically making our own lives meaningless. This theme was actually quite prevalent, and probably reached its apex in the movie Terminator with Arnold Schwarzenegger. It's interesting that that movie, which had a 1984 release, was probably concieved and begun shortly after Metamatic was released. Although this theme now sounds quite dated in many ways, in other ways it's still with us in popular culture. The more recent movie The Matrix is essentially the same theme if you think about it. In addition to manipulating the sounds of his synths to create this bleak, sterile, lifeless soundscape, Foxx used his voice to do the same thing. The lyrics are about people, but they have no emotion, and they seem oddly detached and uncaring, as if the songs were the observations of machines. The percussion is generally muted, not dance-oriented, which further highlights the sounds rather than distracting from them. This changes somewhat in the bonus songs added to the end, since they didn't originally belong to the album anyway. Anyway, my song-by-song will probably be fairly quick since there is little difference in tone or theme or even style. "Plaza" showcases this sound, the muted sounds, and everything. It isn't as dark as some of the others, but it is just as uncaring. "He's a Liquid" is more dark, and makes the man who is the main character of the lyrics sounds fairly machine-like himself, maybe even giving eerie previews of the second Terminator. "Underpass" is the closest thing to a "hit" on the album, and I heard it long before I was able to find Metamatic at all. The cold, dark coda is especially chilling, and although the song takes a while to grow on you, I think it is one of the best on the CD for encapsulating the theme and tone. "Metal Beat" on the other hand becomes slightly more tender and delicate, although still showing alienation and coldness. The next two songs are very similar, darker, more driven, almost dance-like songs, "No One Driving" and "A New Kind of Man" while "Blurred Girl" is much slower. The next song, a weird little number called "030" is also slow, although not as slow as "Blurred Girl" and sounds much more sinister. The next song, the only one I don't like, incidentally, is "Tidal Wave" which sounds kinda dark, kinda not, kinda driven, kinda not. Basically, I think the song doesn't succeed because it doesn't know exactly what it's trying to be. The best song on the album proper is definately "Touch and Go." It features an almost dance-like beat and a slightly less dark tone, but although it almost sounds poppy and even cheerful, at least compared to the rest of the album, it still fits stylistically somehow, in much the same way that "But Not Tonight" fit in Depeche Mode's Black Celebration even though it was the antithesis of what most of the rest of the album had been about. The bonus songs are kinda a mixed bag, in many ways. Some of them fit nicely with the theme of the album while others don't. Two other songs, "Burning Car" and "This City" would have fit, and were from about the same time period, yet aren't inluded (although both are available on the greatest hits like album Assembly.) "Young Love" sounds almost like an older Ultravox song done in the newer style, but it reminds a lot of songs like "Rockwrock" (although the fact that Foxx says "rockwrock" several times in the lyrics may have contributed to that...) "Film One" is a dark instrumental that fits very nicely with the album in general, as is "20th Century." "Miles Away" is a nice song, cheerful in many ways, and fitting almost more with Foxx's later work, which makes it kinda incongruous here, although I'm glad it's available at least. The same is true of "A Long Time" although both of them feature sounds similar to Metamatic even if the style is completely different. Finally, "Swimmer I" is another instrumental featuring some guitar and heavier beats, which make it sound like it could be an instrumental on either Ultravox or John Foxx work.
Overall, the album is best appreciated as a single work. The strong unified theme and tone really start to seep into you as you listen to the entire work, and although the theme is a little dated, it still is powerful and masterfully created by Foxx.
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